Birthday Candles
by Panther2G
Summary: In a world where Shinji Ikari decided the best way to fight SEELE was to shut everyone out, victory came at a cost. After the End, he now has to make up for what he thought he had to do, and face what it cost the people who meant the most to him, especially one in particular.
1. Chapter 1

A week ago (Dec 3rd, 2017) on Sufficient Velocity, this conversation took place:

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Alan Kelson: I've always wanted a story where it turned that it would've been better to have never loved than to have loved and lost.

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Akrasiel23: I can think of an Eva fic that could fulfill that: In his first sortie, Shinji's mind briefly connected to that of his mother's, learning all related to the Eva project and her plans to fight SEELE, having drawn the spots from seeing Rei later, the boy eventually deduced his father's plan as well. It's then, feeling the weight of the sins of his parents, that Shinji Ikari makes a choice, to right the wrongs they have done, and might do, to the world, to prevent SEELE's plans from coming into fruition and to ensure that no one else would have to die in the war to come, and for that, he must avoid that which made his father falter and fall into evil.

He must be alone, never to love nor to receive love, only then, without the ties that blinded his father, can he be able to succeed where he failed and save this broken yet beautiful world.

Man, I think the very concept of the story would make Stryp angry, it's like anti-WAFF.

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Panther2G: While I still prefer WAFF, of course, I can see how this concept could still be done to make a very poignant, bittersweet fic about the sacrifices needed for a greater victory... or a very dark one, especially if it backfires, and things go worse than canon due to Shinji sealing himself off... just like his father. In trying to be unlike him, Shinji becomes identical. He'd end up like Ritsuko when she realized she'd turned into her mother.

Hm... assuming the more positive one, there's even space for a post-war fic where Shinji finally lets himself relax, now that they've won, and start trying to make it up to all the people he _wanted_ to care about but could not. Asuka and the others could be steep mountains to climb in that quest, since Asuka in particular might have been deeply hurt by the way Shinji more actively shut her down than in canon. But the world has been saved, and there's now all the time in their lives to apologize.

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That gave me an idea, and combined with a desire to do a fic for Asuka's birthday on Decmber 4th, led to this.

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 **Birthday Candles**

 **1 of 4**

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I thought I knew everything. I was also 14. So this means I really knew just enough to be #1) an insufferable jerk, #2) a tormented, overwrought _emo_ jerk, and #3) and hurtful idiot.

And a jerk. Of course.

In my defense, I was _trying_ to save the world.

Everyone knows the public story, of course. The parts that were released after the ICJ Tribunal on Third Impact, the UN Trials, the separate national investigations, etc. I, Shinji Ikari, son of Supreme Commander of NERV Gendo Ikari, was summoned to Tokyo-3 on short notice to pilot Evangelion Unit-01 against what would eventually be admitted was the _Third_ Angel, Sachiel. And somehow I won a spectacular victory.

What the public official version mostly leaves out was that was mostly my mother doing the smashing and winning. Sure, I turned out to have an annoying amount of talent for a job I mostly hated, but that first battle was 90% mother. I mostly just held on and tried not to throw up.

It wasn't just the physical side, being thrown around in a wildly charging Evangelion. It was the other side, the part that I haven't really told anyone outside the Tribunals about until now. When mother and I were deeply synched like that, the bond between us wide open in the Eva, I could hear her, communicate with her.

And she told me everything. SEELE, their plans, Second Impact, Instrumentality, everything.

I have to admit, I more or less freaked the Hell out. It wasn't just shock from the end of the battle that made me pass out at the end, and wake up later in the hospital. It was learning my whole family was insane and bent on ending the world and humanity as I knew it in the name of trying to be gods.

Hell of a thing to drop on a 14 year old boy who hadn't precisely had a great childhood to begin with.

So... I kind of went a little nuts. In retrospect, and a pile of therapy, it's easy to say 'Holy shit, that was not healthy and a miracle it didn't leave everyone dead or insane!', but again, I was 14, traumatized, and had a shitty upbringing. So in the face of learning all this, and accepting mother's charge that I had to stop this, I... shut down, sort of.

I wanted to tell everyone, someone, some adult. Misato, or someone. Not me, not 14 year old Shinji Ikari, who was by no measure fit to save the world from a conspiracy that would make the Elders of Zion look like a bad parody. But mother warned me that SEELE would not hesitate a bit to kill anyone who showed signs of knowing too much, so I couldn't.

So I shut out everything that wasn't... mission critical. Mother and I figured out pretty fast that father had... not taken her loss well, and was on his own plan. So, in order not to end up like him, I shut out the idea of getting attached. To anyone. I would be the rock and the island that humanity needed to save the world. I could have a breakdown later.

And I did. Oh God, did I.

And so did Asuka, Touji, Misato...

I am truly sorry, all of you. You know exactly how much, since despite my efforts, SEELE and my father still managed to trigger Instrumentality after... after Kaworu. And so you all got to see inside me, and see my intentions, just as I saw inside you. But you all took that knowledge, and stood with me as we faced down my father, and shut Instrumentality down before it went too far, and we saved the world anyhow.

I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough alone.

I'm sorry to Asuka most of all. Seeing into her heart, seeing how she'd been trying to reach out to me in her way, and how deeply I hurt her by shutting her out cold in my quest to be... unattached... I have yet to forgive myself for that. Even saving the world was almost too much, when it cut her like that.

I have every right to do that with my own heart, my own soul. But I never asked permission for hers. It was not mine to spend like that, and I don't know if I ever _can_ forgive myself for how I hurt her. I knew some of it at the time, too. Hard to miss the muffled weeping coming from her room some nights. I wouldn't let myself... do anything. But what carried me through was the promise I kept making to myself was that once we had beaten SEELE, I'd make up for it, even if it took the rest of my life.

Some nights that promise was all that let me sleep.

So there we were, SEELE smashed, every member of the conspiracy that we managed to capture before they could cheat the hangman in jail forever, the disruption of Instrumentality settled, everything right with the world. Great, right? They gave us therapists, stipends, and public congratulations, and then stuffed Asuka, Misato, and myself right back in that apartment, to be left alone by the reformed UN, the Japanese Government, and the media. At our own request, yes.

And no, I have no idea how Tokyo-3 was put back as it was, empty Geofront and all. Blame it on Rei Ayanami.

You might have thought 'Oh, great! We're still living together, all bills taken care of, perfect opportunity to make things up to Asuka and Misato!' Rei too, if she'd ever come back from Instrumentality.

You'd have been wrong.

Turns out, while Asuka got a good look inside my heart during all that, and saw _why_ I'd shut her out, she also saw that I was far more aware of her attraction and flirting with me than I let on at the time, _and_ my own awareness that I was hurting her by rejection. Which she... took badly.

Things on that front came to a head December 4th, 2016. Yes, her 15th birthday. Yes, it was my fault. Of course. I had made up a pretty, authentic-calligraphy-and-all letter apologizing to her and promising to never again hurt her, to always be there when she wanted or needed me. I'd explained everything to her already, over the months we'd all been living together, but it felt proper to have it all written down and in a nice formal form to give her as a present.

I'm not a _complete_ idiot. It was hardly the only present I'd gotten her. Plus the full course meal I'd spent the day cooking up.

Ok, fine, I _was_ a complete idiot. Yes, I was doing all this out of pathetic hope that I wouldn't somehow permanently drive away the gorgeous, vibrant, and utterly fascinating girl I'd fallen for.

Yes, I loved her. Yes, through the war itself and my stupid promise to put saving the world above everything else. That promise was a lot easier to make before I met her. It was hard enough when I met Rei. I sort of loved her too. But I was 14 and afraid and desperate about SEELE and my father's plans, so it was easier to shut all that out and tell myself it was necessary to save the world.

I did mention I was an idiot.

I mentioned my promise to make things up after the war, and this felt like a way to both apologize and assure her I meant everything I'd told her over the months since Instrumentality. But of course, I hadn't really let myself face thinking about her pain over events, or the timing. So when I handed Asuka that envelope with my letter at the end of her birthday dinner, I probably should have expected what happened. Asuka read the letter, her face going blank, and then gave me a look that I'm surprised didn't burn the shirt off my chest and the skin off my face. It felt like it was Ramiel all over again.

"You... you _fucking_ _ **ass**_!" she screamed.

I blinked. I had no idea.

"You.. you give me this, this... _NOW?!_ You give me this _NOW?!_ Where were you when I was being violated by the 15th?! Where were you when I was alone in this apartment a year ago today?! Where were you when I was lying in that bathtub waiting to DIE?! NOW? Now because it's convenient to you?!" she roared. "Fuck off and _DIE_!"

"Asuka, I-"

The wadded up letter hit me in the face. By the time I blinked my eyes open again, she was around the corner and down the hall. I heard her bedroom door slam shut.

We didn't talk for a week.

And that's the story of how I ruined Asuka Langley Soryu's 14th _and_ 15th birthdays.

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Author's Note: For background, in this AU neither Rei nor Kaworu returned from Instrumentality, and Shinji shut out everyone pretty hard all the way up to Instrumentality, deeply hurting Asuka and Misato.


	2. Chapter 2

**Birthday Candles 2**

 **2 of 4**

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Things improved over the next year. They kind of had to, since screaming at me and throwing things was kind of a low bar.

In hindsight, the fact that we were still living together probably should have been a hint. But as I mentioned, I'm an idiot. I lived in a perpetual state of low-grade dread that Asuka would just one day up and move out to her own place, a threat she made not infrequently. In retrospect, I should have given more weight to my own desperate mental self-reassurance that Asuka did view us as family of a sort, and family that she liked a lot more than her father and step-mother, so why would she leave?

We'd seen each other's hearts. The idea of Asuka leaving terrified me like nothing else. I should have known the same was true for her.

It was bad enough to lose Misato.

We should have seen it coming, and I suppose on some level we did. Kaji's resurrection may have been some final gift from Rei, but Misato never questioned it. She and Kaji didn't take long to resume where they'd left off, and it was only a few months after Asuka's 15th birthday that Misato told us she was moving out, to a place with more room for the family she and Kaji intended to start on.

She was moving herself out so as to disrupt things for us as little as possible, she said. And she'd be close by. Close-ish. Still within Tokyo-3, anyway. Most of the time. Kaji and she were both still in high demand as two of the few people the reformed UN trusted to ferret out any SEELE leftovers, and they traveled a lot. We'd have her phone number, call anytime.

Ok, yes, it was her running away too. I said we got therapy, not that it fully helped. We were all messes, especially after Instrumentality. The rest of the world got off lightly, forgetting most of it. Asuka, Misato, and I were all right there at the eye of the storm, and got all of it. It's easy to look back now and say 'Misato was a barely-functional alcoholic with toxic coping tactics'. She was still one of the only people in my life who had _ever_ tried to care for me. So I give her a pass.

And to be fair, it was partly resentment from both Asuka and I that colored our initial reactions. For me, too much like being dumped at the train station by my father. For Asuka, too much like a validation of her fears that everyone would abandon the 'real her'. We snapped at each other for days. Asuka took over Misato's former room, so I finally got my old one back.

It would be easy to describe us as two broken teenagers too afraid to leave even the meager comfort we had in our little shelter. It would be wrong. We had no real close neighbors. There was still hardly anyone in our building. Misato made sure to screen the Hell out of anyone trying to move in, and kept the cultists, celebrity-chasers, and other nuts away. It was isolation, sure, a little. But it was more privacy than that, and that's what Asuka and I both wanted. We were both still very afraid of other people, really.

But per the directive/urging of our therapists, we did venture out of our comfort zone. Shopping. School. A few low-key public events. A few media interviews a year. I nearly cheered when I saw Asuka do her first solo TV interview in 2017. She said she hated it. Because I wasn't there.

Because we did all the rest together. All of it. Even our half-assed attempts at dating.

Yes, we tried that too. Not each other. Other people. I took Asuka's 'fuck off and die' as a pretty clear instruction to back off, and did. We went to some mixers, tried some blind dates arranged by Hikari and such, things like that. Asuka went on more than I did. She always was better about being able to fake a public persona than I was. But even I had a few. Even some that were more than single dates.

I'm still glad Asuka was my first kiss. None of the others came close.

But anyway, she and I still did most things together. It was... less scary. Call it residual guilt from Instrumentality, fear everyone else in the world would see us as to blame, or whatever. She'd give me annoyed looks and sharp comments a lot, but she always demanded I be there.

I never let myself _believe_ it was her accepting my promise.

Her 16th birthday was more social than the last. It wasn't just Misato, I, and her this time. We'd invited friends we'd made over the year, our friends from school, even the pair Asuka still referred to as 'the Stooges'. We even invited some of Asuka's 'ex-boyfriends', or at least the ones who'd rated more than one date with her. She didn't have anyone serious.

She seemed happy.

Then everyone else went home and it was just us again.

"Thank you, Shinji."

"You're welcome, Asuka. Happy birthday." I'd done the full-course meal again, even better. I assumed she was thanking me for that.

"I still hate you, you know?"

I blinked again. "I'm... sorry? Is this... I mean... I'm sorry about last year. I shouldn't hav-"

"Shut up." She paced back and forth in the living room, picking at the remaining detritus of the party. "You... you are such an idiot. I hate that. You don't get it, do you? I hate you because... this whole year. And yes, your 'promise'. And all the stuff before that. You. I hate you for..." she waved her hands. "All of it. For being... god _dammit_ , Shinji! Why weren't you like this before?! _During_ the war, when I needed you?"

"I'm sor-"

" _Don't_ say it." She stopped pacing, staring at me. "You... you've spent this whole year doing what you said. Supporting me. Backing me up. Doing what I want, when I want, as I need. Even when I'm pretty sure you wanted to do something else, or just hide away and do nothing. Why?"

"Because I promise-"

She locked eyes with me. "No. Stop. Don't give me that. I saw your head, Shinji. I know when you're bullshitting. Try again."

"Because I..." I swallowed and looked away.

"Say it. I want to hear it out loud."

"It's... hard."

"I saw it in Instrumentality! _That's_ why I hate you, Shinji. I saw it, you've said it, it was _in your fucking letter,_ and yet, for the last twelve months, you haven't said it once. Not when I was spending every Friday night out with some guy who wasn't you, not when it was us having dinner alone for the 200th time, not... not once. You said you felt it back then. I _know_ what you felt every time this year. I saw it in your eyes every time I left on a date, every time we said goodnight. You've been a perfect goddamn gentleman, a fucking Nice Guy... I want to know why you haven't said it _even once_ this year.. I _get_ you, Shinji, more than anyone in the world. And I don't get _this_. So explain!" She was breathing hard. I think she was about to... no. She wasn't going to cry. She didn't do that.

"Because I don't deserve to. I know how much I hurt you with my brilliant 'no attachments' plan, and you were pretty clear when I gave you the letter last year you... I did all this because I'm keeping my promise, like I said I would. No matter... I don't get a reward. I sold myself to save the world, and I got it, and that's it. I promised to make it up to you, even if it took my life, and I will," I said slowly.

"GOTT! You are a fucking idiot!" she growled in frustration. "A self-sacrificing _moron_! If you'd been willing to say it _before_ , I wouldn't hate you now for _not_ saying it! That's what I hate about you, Shinji! Knowing why you did it, how you felt, how you feel _now_ , and you still won't _fucking say it_!" She walked right up to me and grabbed my shirt. "So _SAY IT!_ Why are you doing all this?!"

I pinched my eyes shut. "Because I love you and promised I'd never abandon you! There, are you happy no-"

She slammed her lips to mine.

I have no idea how long we stood there. I didn't care about anything else. Twenty, thirty minutes? I have no idea, really.

Eventually, she broke the kiss. She let go of my shirt, and I fell backwards onto my ass. I smacked my head on the floor, seeing stars.

"Such an idiot," she muttered. She turned away and walked into her room, closing the door behind her. But she looked back before she did. And I saw it. It was small, but 100% there.

I laid there for a while. Brain not found, please reboot. After a long while, I got up, finished cleaning, and went to my room.

And that's how Asuka's 16th birthday ended with me laid out flat on the floor, my head hurting, and Asuka going to bed with a faint smile on her face.

Best one yet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Birthday Candles 3**

 **3 of 4**

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Things got... awkward in 2018.

I may be an idiot, but Asuka's speech and kiss made it clear...-ish, that she _wanted_ me to... say it. And yes, I had put it rather prominently in my letter. Eventually I more or less understood that Asuka was angry about me locking her out when she (thanks to Instrumentality) had plenty of proof I was as interested in her as she was in me back then, but I buried it. Even for the cause of saving the world.

I tried to tell myself it had been worth it, that it had worked, hadn't it? Asuka's contention was that it would have been better to swing the opposite way, since _she_ was firmly convinced she'd have been better off in the fight knowing I was...um... looking at her, so to speak. She more or less said that in the course of many debates we had on the topic over the next year. It took her a while to say it so bluntly, though.

Yes, even after that kiss, we were both... well, we didn't exactly jump into each other's arms. In fact, for the next several weeks, we were just awkward as Hell around each other. Asuka had made it very clear the ball was in my court, but I had absolutely no idea what to do.

Don't get me wrong: I _wanted_ to sweep her into my arms, shower kisses and tender whispers all over her, and carry her off to our bed for night after night of gentle-yet-passionate lovemaking.

Problem: I am Shinji Ikari, titanic idiot, and she was Asuka Langley Soryu, top-level-expert in self-sabotage and mixed messages. This was going to be like skiing uphill even in the best of circumstances.

Also, I am about as far from 'smooth Casanova' as humanly possible. If I _tried_ to sweep her into my arms for a kiss, I'd probably trip, knock us both down, and manage to break her nose and my arm on the landing. And then we'd somehow catch fire.

...double also: I am Shinji Ikari, son of two utterly insane people who were part of a plot to end the world that came within a hair's breadth of succeeding. You cannot _imagine_ the amount of guilt I piled on myself. Yes, my half-assed plan to dedicate myself to nothing but the defeat of SEELE and my father had succeeded, but I almost fucked it all up, and I'm _completely certain_ I could and should have done better. I could have saved more lives, I could have stopped SEELE before they got that far, I could have... I could have...

I could have saved Kaworu.

I know, it's stupid. He was an Angel, the Call would never have left him, and he told me himself that he _had_ to die to end the threat he represented just by existing.

I don't care. I should have been better. I should have found a way.

I shouldn't have had to kill the one person who made me feel _valued_ at that point in my life.

I shouldn't... he deserved to live. I was the tainted child of madmen out to kill billions. He was cursed by his own birth with what he was. He had no choice, and without choice there cannot be any sin.

Bottom line: The girl I loved had demanded I say it out loud and kissed me, we lived together, and she'd demonstrated she wanted more from me... and the more she did, the less I felt I deserved _any_ of it.

I know it's stupid. It's easy to say that. I said it to _myself_ enough times. But convincing my heart of it was not that simple. I blamed myself for Instrumentality, Kaworu, all the dead on the way... I wasn't lying at all to Asuka when I said I didn't deserve any reward. I wasn't trying for some Nice Guy thing where I'd love her from afar but expect it to count as some kind of credit towards winning her. I loved her without expecting anything back because I was afraid... no, I was _convinced_ I did not deserve her. She deserved better than me.

But oh gods I wanted her.

So the combination of my wanting her, my wanting to support whatever _she_ wanted, and my monumental guilt complex made for a 'fun' spring of 2018.

I didn't know it at the time, and she didn't tell me for years, but Asuka had salvaged my letter from the year before and kept it. She'd read it at times when she felt low. She kept it well hidden: I never found it in years of cleaning our apartment, or even suspected it existed until she mentioned what I'd written in it that time.

Again, I should should should have thought about it, about how one of the things that so powerfully attracted me to her was how similar we were in many ways, and how logically, if I was feeling depressed at the idea of any kind of 'reward' for fucking up so badly, or positively terrified at the idea of someone loving me back, she probably was too. But I am blind as Hell in the field, and as I'm sure too many people with depression already know, depression and guilt themselves can suck all power out of even 'knowing' some things.

So we... muddled about. We kept going on 'double dates' and such with others, trying to... I don't know, find someone who could satisfy all the insecurities and needs we had without risking anything we already had. It didn't work too well. Every single date or mixer just underlined it harder: we both wanted _each other_ , but were terrified and convinced we didn't merit it.

What saved us was... well, us. Asuka being Asuka, and me hanging on to one of my few admirable traits. I was a man of my word, and I had made Asuka a promise. Not even Instrumentality or my own fucking issues were going to stop me from keeping my word. And Asuka wasn't going to let me forget it.

It's easy now, to look back and realize every time Asuka poked me and reminded me about my promise, and how much an idiot I was for not saying something before Third Impact, she was really asking me to reassure _her_ that I meant it and it was still true. And I did, every time, happily. _That_ was something that got around my guilt.

It's strange, to think now how long it took for us to... work out our 'language'. Despite being so drawn to each other, similar backgrounds, and living together for over two years at that point, we only just then started to work out that 'you idiot' and 'I promised' were how we said something else entirely. Not that we even realized it ourselves until long after. We were both still hiding behind the surface of the words at that point.

It was enough. By June of 2018, Asuka had relentlessly, in her own way, chipped away at enough of my guilt that I was... not as bad. That is to say, she relentlessly _badgered_ me about looking or feeling guilty whenever she noticed, and made me admit I had tried more than anyone under more adverse circumstances than anyone could expect a 14 year old to face, and accepted huge amounts of pain on myself in the name of saving everyone. That I was a good person who did deserve some recognition for it.

She was Asuka. She was implacable, unstoppable. Even when the subject was 'make Shinji feel better'. Which is just what I needed. Her unstoppable force met the immovable object of my guilt and shoved.

So when June of 2018 came, and it was my birthday, and Asuka asked what _I_ wanted, she didn't let me get away with a mumbled 'nothing', or 'just some sheet music'. She knew me. Better than anyone. She pushed and poked and made me admit what I _did_ want.

A date with her.

Not another 'double date' where we just sort of had two other people along and we were nominally dating them, not each other. (One of those got so bad it ended with the other pair leaving as a couple, and thanking _us_ for helping them get together.) Not another 'we're just going shopping together', or 'we're just going to this interview together at the same time'. An actual, no-pretending, 'I am asking you specifically out on a yes-that-kind date'.

I was less terrified facing Sachiel.

To be fair, Sachiel probably _was_ less scary than Asuka.

She said yes.

Poets and sages have spent thousands of years trying to describe the sensation of 'falling in love'. They missed the obvious. That's what it feels like.

Falling.

Like free-fall. Except it never ends. I thought I loved her before then. I knew nothing. Being loved _back_ is... no drug, no liquor, nothing else is as intoxicating.

And this was just _dating_ her.

I know, it sounds silly. We were already living together. We were already seeing each other more than some married couples. Hell, we'd technically already _died_ together facing the Mass Production Evas. I sometimes wondered if there was some god out there getting a good laugh out of the way we seemed to be living our lives backwards, dying together, then falling in love, and _then_ dating.

But once we were 'officially' dating... as a... couple... I can't even describe it. I'll try anyway.

Have you ever held your breath for 17 years, and then tasted air? Have you ever realized 'I have _two_ legs! I can walk!', and then stood up? Have you ever suddenly had someone who you _trusted_ , who _listened_ to you?

It's like that.

That's what saved us, what let us get through the guilt, the depression, the fear. I promised I'd never abandon her, my whole life. And she knew I meant it. And that gave her enough to grab me back, and hold on. To give an example...

A few months later, we were just... sitting on the couch, talking (We were a long way from doing anything more than some kissing.) and we started talking about the guilt. Both of us. I... mentioned Kaworu. Asuka had missed that whole part, due to being catatonic, and I did not like to talk about it, so it was something she'd never heard the true, full story on, the one I never told _anyone_. Not Misato, not my therapist, no one.

The part where I was nearly catatonic myself after... after. The part where I spent hours washing and washing and washing my hands, trying to get the blood off, until I all but scrubbed my own skin off and they were bloody again in a different way. The part where I spent night after night screaming into a pillow, because I didn't deserve to make anyone else listen to my pain. The part where I deserved to suffer for killing him and hurting Asuka and failing everyone and-

I mentioned we had breakdowns, yes?

This was a 'good' one. As in, high-grade, best quality, falling-completely-100%-apart. I was an incoherent, screaming, crying mess for hours.

She never let go of me.

That night was the first night we went to bed together. No, not like that. We just... held each other. And in tiny, barely-there whispers after midnight Asuka had her own breakdown. Talking about her mother, her father, how she never in her whole life felt needed, wanted, or loved in her own right, not as a Pilot, until she came to Tokyo-3 and met us. Met me. About how my 'no attachments' mask wasn't nearly as good as I thought, and she could tell what I felt, and how much it hurt when I turned away from her. About how her mother's sacrifice in force-ejecting her and self-destructing Unit-02 had saved the day and both of us, but cost Asuka the only person she knew loved her back right then. About how finding out in Instrumentality that I had cared about her, but buried it had been the final stab in the heart and made her hate me for it for a long time. About how that had helped make her a mess for months after our 'victory'.

And about how the way I kept my promise even after she literally threw it back in my face finally convinced her it was real, and that it was safe for her to... let go like this as long as I was there with her.

And she did. She crumbled as hard as I did, not eight hours after I had. It was probably not the safest idea for us both to go to pieces like that in the same day, but... it was us. It was just for us, for each other. We could not have let ourselves be ourselves and relax our guards like that for anyone else. It only worked because we were who we were for each other.

When the sun rose the next morning, we were still holding each other, and the world was ok.

After that, the fall was easier. The autumn, I mean.

We started sleeping together nightly, in what had once been Misato's old room. Asuka insisted on a European-style bed, though. She insisted futons were dumb. I didn't care.

She also insisted that I hold her and say it out loud every night. I did care about that, eagerly.

I noticed, but did not _mind_ that she never said it back. Just 'you idiot'. Tone says a lot. And I was finally starting to speak our 'language'.

So that December 4th, on her 17th birthday, all I had to say when I gave her something else, something new was 'I promised'.

The ring fit perfectly.

She said yes.

And then she said 'you idiot' out loud. Except this time she finally said what I'd heard behind the words for months.

And that's the story of how I made Asuka Langley Soryu's 17th birthday a good one: I made her cry.


	4. Chapter 4

**Birthday Candles 4**

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* * *

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Everyone at the party applauded. Hikari nearly exploded. Misato gave us a bottle of 'fertility sake'. Asuka nearly made _her_ drink it.

New Year's was nice. As was January. And... well, you get the idea.

I managed to coast to February before panic set in. _OhholyshitIamengagedtobemarriedandIhavenoideawhatI'mdoing  
_  
Fortunately, Asuka was _also_ panicking, so we more or less balanced each other out. Yes, I know that sounds stupid. Shut up.

Yes, I know that sounds more like her than Shinji the Doormat. Benefits of being with her.

Finally I set a date to figure out a plan, and after a long cuddle session with her helped, sat down to figure things out.

...Ok, _we_ sat down and she pointed out I was the baka, she was the genius, so I should hold her beer and watch this while _she_ figured things out. (Metaphorically speaking. Misato's example kind of ensured that neither of us were really drinkers.)

First hurdle couples in our situation usually faced was financial security and a place to live. We had that already taken care of. In fact, with the stipends the reformed UN and Japanese government had handed us, we could have lived the rest of our lives in not-inconsiderable comfort without ever working again. Seeing as we had effectively no financial worries and a place to ourselves already, that was easy. Next came the harder bit: We were both well below Japan's age of majority so in theory we weren't _allowed_ to get married until... 2021.

As Asuka said: "Fuck that."

Option one: Go to the US or Germany, where Asuka had citizenship, and the age of majority was lower. Problem: The US still required parental permission until Asuka was 18, and Germany required talking to Asuka's father anyway.

To which Asuka said: "Fuck that _twice_."

Fortunately, we had another option besides waiting a year or having to talk to the second-worst father in the world. (Even Asuka admitted no one came close to my father.)

"Mister Ikari, this is very irregular. Neither of you are even 18, let alone 20, and-"

"Should I be calling the Prime Minister's office? Or the Imperial Majordomo? I have both of their numbers. I'm sure they'd love to hear all about the trouble 'The Boy and Girl Who Saved The World' are having with the Prefectural Registry Office."

"M-mister Ikari! There's no need to-"

"Then you can get the paperwork done promptly. We have a date chosen, and we do not want delays."

I was the one making this phone call, since Asuka was busy running a camera aimed at me, and trying her hardest not to scream with laughter. Apparently when I get angry and have to deal with annoying people on the phone, I turn into a disconcertingly close imitation of my father's old 'icy growl and scary face'. On one hand, I hate even being that much like him. On the other hand, the reason Asuka was running the camera is she finds my 'Gendo Ikari impersonation' to be _hysterical_.

And I like making her laugh more than anything.

So yeah, I browbeat the Prefectural Registry Office with our special legal status and effective blank check from the government. So far, all we'd asked from them was to be left in peace. Now I tossed them the slightly more thorny bit of 'we're 17 and want to get married before we're 18.' They folded.

Well, before _she_ was 18. Asuka picked the date, and I couldn't find any reason to gainsay her choice. It would be shortly after my 18th birthday in June. She picked August 25th.

The day we met.

I admitted it was fitting and poetic, to get married four years to the day we met aboard the _Over The Rainbow_. She smugly replied that of course it was, she was German and therefore eminently cultured and perfect. I pointed at her not-at-all-hidden pile of extremely smutty yaoi 'romance' manga she had under her bed. She hit me with a pillow and called me an idiot. I pulled her shirt up over her head and tickled her stomach, she blindly dragged my shorts down to around my ankles to make me trip, I fell on top of her...

Our arguments were a lot more fun that year.

Misato was mildly surprised when we told her we were getting married after only nine months of being engaged, but was happy for us. Asuka's poker face held. Mine almost did, but Misato wasn't dumb. She noticed me sweating.

She looked at me suspiciously. "What aren't you telling me, Shinji?"

I sweated more.

Asuka rolled her eyes. "I should have known you couldn't withstand the terrible power of being mildly questioned for thirty seconds, baka Shinji."

Misato turned her inquisitorial look on her. "Got something to confess, Asuka?"

"Yeah, I'm faster than you."

"Huh?"

"We figure August is both poetically appropriate, and I won't be showing yet," Asuka said smugly, flipping her hair.

"What are yo-...holy shit." Misato froze.

"I mean, come on, you and Kaji have been married a whole year and then some now, and you're still-YEEK!"

Misato picked Asuka up and swung her around. "You little... AHAAHAHAH! You two! How?"

"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very mu-" Asuka sarcastically began.

Misato put her down on my lap. "Oh, knock it off!"

"Come on, Misato. How do you think we did it? Same way everyone else does. And once I got baka Shinji into bed, I hardly let him out. He had _years_ of making up to do." Asuka's smug smile could have put an entire destruction of cats to shame.

Yes, destruction. That's the collective noun for a group of cats. No, I'm not kidding. Go look it up. English is weird.

Yes, I know English now. Asuka made me learn. And Deutsch, aber natürlich. You didn't think we spent _all_ of our time laying around stress-testing our bedframe, did you?

Misato eventually settled for being only slightly envious that Asuka and I had managed to catch after less than six months of...trying. Ahem. We didn't _exactly_ plan it, so much as just be really sloppy about protection in the first few months of actually 'sleeping together'. We were kind of enjoying ourselves too much to care, and while we initially panicked _badly_ when Asuka realized she was late, we were 4 months into being engaged, and mostly got over it fairly quickly.

Ok, yeah, there's a lot of qualifiers there, I admit.

It really did test us, how far we'd come and the limits of what we'd achieved in therapy. Asuka had spent most of her life since menarche being _aggressively_ not interested in being a mother. Not after the childhood she'd had, and what happened to her mother. The ugly stress on their relationship Asuka's father and step-mother went through during their many years of trying to have a child of their own didn't help either, since Asuka had an unwilling ringside seat for that until she basically left home entirely for Pilot training.

We had a few bad nights. On the good side, she rapidly got over blaming me for the situation. We'd progressed that much. On the other hand, that meant she had a nasty relapse of terror at the idea of herself being good enough to be a mother, and of being only 17, and so on. At least I could...well, all I really could do was hold her and constantly reassure her (and myself!) that we were not our parents, and we were damn sure not going to be like them or treat our... our kid like that.

We carried on. Focusing on getting things ready was oddly a help, since panicking for the wedding kept us from panicking over anything after that. We could panic about that after the wedding was done.

August came too fast and too slow. So did the 25th.

I wish that day could have lasted forever.

It was like a dream. Word had leaked out, somehow, and the Imperial Household Agency had called _us_ , offering the Palace as a venue. They mostly wanted to associate the Imperial Family with whatever glory there was playing host to the wedding of 'The Boy and Girl Who Saved The World', but Asuka was only too happy to accept the spotlight for us, and as she'd well learned by that point, I would refuse her nothing if it made her happy.

She glowed. I managed not to faint. She truly did look like a princess.

By October she was obvious. By November, enormous. And as December drew close, varying between tremulous and murderous. I kept her calm with footrubs. Lots of them.

And because our lives are apparently never done with cosmic irony, she went into labor the day before her 18th birthday.

For 18 hours.

 **.**

* * *

 **.**

"I... am... going... to... KILL... YOU... SHINJI..."

"Just breathe, Asuka."

"Come... into... range... I... want... to... strangle... youOOOOOW OW OW OW OW AAAARRRG!" Her eyes rolled up in her head and she passed out with the last push. She came around a little later, feeling emptied.

"Are we done? I... is it a boy or a girl?" she asked weakly. We'd declined an ultrasound determination ahead of time. We'd prepared male and female names either way. Ryouji or Kyoko was fine with me.

Asuka's eyes were barely open. I hesitated. "Um..." I gulped. "A boy..."

Asuka smiled. "So, Ryouji it is-"

"Both of them."

"...what?"

I handed her Ryouji, carefully swaddled. "Here's Ryouji... and his little brother by 15 minutes, Kaworu." I held him up, nestled in my arms.

"Kaworu?" Asuka blinked her eyes open a bit more. "Twins? I..." She took in my hesitant, almost fearful look. "I suppose that's a nice name."

I almost wilted in relief. "I'm sorry, they... they asked me, and you were still out, and I... just... it was the first thing I could think of, and-"

She very wearily raised her arm not occupied by baby and waved at me. "It's fine, baka. He... I know what he meant to you. It's... a good name."

"...it's four in the morning, Asuka. Happy birthday. You and... our sons."

She chuckled weakly. "That'll keep them from forgetting their mom's birthday." She looked down at the perfect, tiny blue eyes vaguely looking up at her general direction. "Welcome to the world we saved, kids. Your mom and dad are even more scared than you are, but we're still kicking. Welcome to the party. Happy birthday to us all."

And that's how for her 18th birthday, Asuka Langley Soryu gave us both presents, and I was the one to cry this time.


End file.
